a-b-street/abstreet

Represent people inside buildings better using procedural generation

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#127 opened on Jul 4, 2020

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 (2 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (6,779 stars) (256 forks)batch import
design-neededgood first issue

Description

When you click a building with people inside, they currently appear, but their arrangement is a bit silly (and sometimes leaks outside the building). It'd be fun to improve this, and it's pretty self-contained. Code is at https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/3eecdeddff70bbca2fb36f6e1bb0ef634fe01cf1/game/src/info/building.rs#L182. Some ideas:

  1. From the building outline, procedurally generate a floor plan
  2. Move people around inside the building slowly to represent activity inside. This should be a very cheap calculation, not a full-blown simulation or anything requiring storing any state. Ideally you take as input (sim time, person ID, the building) and come up with a position.
  3. Maybe allow mousing over and clicking people inside buildings. At least one person during user-testing was surprised you couldn't.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
rust
Domain
frontend
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Rust basicsFamiliarity with codebase in game/src/info/building.rs
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
65
Research direction
Start by examining the code in game/src/info/building.rs to understand current person placement. Review the procedural generation ideas in the issue, particularly generating a floor plan from building outline. Look into similar algorithms in other projects or simple geometric approaches. Consider the constraint of cheap calculation as stated. Also check the comments on the issue for any additional context.